


Gradually and Then Suddenly

by earlgreytea68



Series: Schrodingerverse [2]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: COVID-19, Coronavirus, Covid-19 Related, M/M, Pandemics, Quarantine, Tennyson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23454088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: Life in quarantine: fourth-grade science, couch concerts, blanket forts.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Series: Schrodingerverse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687264
Comments: 31
Kudos: 139
Collections: Lock Down Fest





	Gradually and Then Suddenly

**Author's Note:**

> For the first couple of weeks after entering lock-down, I couldn't write much of anything. Now I'm writing constantly, which is a good sign, as it's a good coping mechanism. But I felt like I really needed to write something that reflected how I was living, like, all these scenes I was writing with people just *going places* seemed too weird for me. 
> 
> So I wrote this.

There’s a line in _The Sun Also Rises_. Patrick knows it, because Pete once read _The Sun Also Rises_ out loud to him, during the travel time of a grueling tour when Patrick had to rest his voice and couldn’t keep up a conversation. He was too prone to sudden exclamations if they played videogames together, so instead Pete started reading to him. Hemingway, naturally. _The Sun Also Rises_. Patrick thought it was only okay, but he remembers this line. Well, lines. “How did you go bankrupt?” one character asks, and the other replies, “Two ways: gradually and then suddenly.”

Gradually and then suddenly, Patrick thinks, is how the pandemic hits. He finds himself thinking of that line really all the time now, quarantined in their house together, watching Pete win eBay auctions for cereal and clean out the fucking garage well enough to find masks to donate to the hospital. It was gradual, Patrick thinks, far away, distant, and then it was sudden and absolute. Not like falling in love with Pete Wentz. That was sudden, and then gradual. It happened immediately, and then glacially over the course of fifteen years. 

He doesn’t say this to Pete, though. He can think these things in his head but when he tries to say them out loud, he always feels like he can’t really make Pete understand, the words scatter away from him and he’s only giving Pete some sort of pale approximation. He’ll write a song instead, he thinks.

If you have to quarantine, their house isn’t so bad. It’s much bigger than two men and a boy need, so they have plenty of alone space, including a recording studio that was supposed to be a pool house that Patrick commandeered immediately upon moving in. They need a recording studio way more than they need a pool house, their _house_ can be the pool house, what even is the point of a goddamn pool house? Pool houses are for fancier people than Patrick Stump, he tells himself…and then outfits it as a self-indulgent recording studio, okay, maybe Patrick Stump’s got some fancy in him, but not pool-house-level fancy, a recording studio is different.

Pete comes into the recording studio and collapses on the couch. “Guess what?” he mumbles.

“It’s recess?” guesses Patrick fondly, because he can see Tennyson jumping on the trampoline in the yard.

“Fourth grade’s not that important, Patrick,” says Pete earnestly. “How important is education, really? Like, does Tennyson need anything more than a third-grade education? He’s already too smart for the two of us. We can probably just call it a day now and he’ll be fine.”

“I am going to Facetime your parents and have you repeat that paragraph,” Patrick remarks.

Pete groans and says, “You’re supposed to _love_ me.”

“I’ll take over this afternoon,” Patrick says, and turns back to his track to make sure everything’s saved the way he wants it.

“You don’t have to,” Pete says.

“Of course I do, you’re terrible at science, Tennyson thinks you’re going to make him fail science, I promised him I’d help him.”

“I resent the implication that I couldn’t pass fourth-grade science. I’ve got, like, most of a college degree.”

Patrick smiles at him and gets up, stretching. He glances from Tennyson, trying to do flips now, to Pete, still sprawled on the couch. Pete looks tired. Pete hasn’t been sleeping. Pete gets anxious at night. He vibrates fretfully next to Patrick. Really good orgasms don’t seem to help the way they once did. “Do you want to take a nap?”

Pete shakes his head. “Not really,” he says dully. When Pete does sleep, it’s fitful. He says he hates the dreams.

Patrick leans over the couch. “Look at him out there, safe and sound. Look at all of us right here, safe and sound. Hmm?”

“My subconscious is a vicious bastard,” Pete says.

“Yeah, I know, I’d love to have a word with it,” Patrick says ruefully.

Pete looks up at him, dark smudges under those golden eyes. “I wish I was better at this.”

“You’re the best anyone can be,” Patrick promises him.

“I don’t understand fourth-grade science.”

“Yeah, but that’s what you’ve got me for,” says Patrick.

***

Patrick sits at the table with Tennyson and tries his very best to understand fourth-grade science, but, like, who understands how electricity works, it just, like, you flip on a switch and it works.

Tennyson says, frustrated, “Why do I need to know this stuff?”

Patrick was just thinking the same thing but he says automatically, “School is very important.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” says Tennyson, unimpressed.

“Look,” says Patrick reasonably, “your dad and I don’t understand electricity, so who’s going to save us if something happens to the electricity?”

“The electric company,” Tennyson answers promptly, “because none of us should fool around at all with the electricity.”

“Yeah, actually, I support that answer,” decides Patrick. He leans over the tablet between them, trying to read the diagram of the circuit more closely.

Tennyson says, “Hey, can I talk to you about something _really_ important?”

“I’m telling you,” Patrick says patiently, “school is important.” He straightens away from the tablet and looks at Tennyson. “But yeah, of course, what’s up?”

“I’m really worried about Dad,” Tennyson says solemnly.

Patrick blinks. “You are?”

“He’s kind of freaking out about all of this,” Tennyson explains, in case Patrick didn’t notice.

“He’s… He’s fine,” Patrick lies blithely, because he doesn’t know what the fuck else to do.

“He’s cleaning the _garage_ ,” Tennyson says, and yes, that sentence strikes horror into Patrick’s heart, it’s true.

“Yeah, but not…not _well_ ,” Patrick defends weakly.

“We’re okay, right? We’re doing everything they’re telling us to do. We’re totally okay.” Tennyson looks earnestly at Patrick to confirm the truth of this.

Patrick really wishes he could take both of these Wentzes of his and get them to believe things are okay. They both badly want him to be able to turn off those voices in their heads, and he so, so desperately wishes that he could. Patrick would make the whole world safe for them if he could, save both of them any future moments of worry, he would give anything for that ability.

But he doesn’t have it.

“We are,” Patrick says, “the most okay.” He really doesn’t know what else he can say.

There’s a clatter from Pete cleaning in the garage, and Patrick winces as Tennyson frowns over in that general direction.

“Listen to me, T.S. Eliot,” Patrick starts, and then stops when Tennyson looks at him with his wide amber Wentz eyes, because Patrick doesn’t know what comes next. He reaches out to tousle Tennyson’s hair and then he says, well, the truth. “I will always do everything I can to make sure nothing ever hurts either one of you.”

Patrick has no power to stop viruses. He has no power to prevent Tennyson or Pete from getting sick. But he knows that he would do anything that _is_ in his power, like holing them up here for as long as they need to, and maybe that’s good enough.

It seems good enough for Tennyson, who launches himself at him in a hug.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Tennyson mumbles into his shoulder. “This would have sucked with just Dad.”

***

Patrick has an idea. It’s not much of an idea, but it’s the only one Patrick has, and Tennyson tackles it with relish, so he thinks it was a good distraction.

Pete misses out on their fun because he stays in the garage, moving boxes around aimlessly.

When he and Tennyson have the surprise all ready, Patrick goes to retrieve him.

Pete’s spent hours in the garage, but Patrick can discern no difference from how it looked before. He leans against the doorjamb and says, “ _Please_ stop cleaning the garage.”

“It needs to be done,” Pete says nonsensically. Strands of hair have fallen out of his messy bun. He looks vaguely like the heroine of a pioneer novel after a long day of homesteading.

Patrick says, “Not now. Come eat dinner.”

Pete shakes his head and goes back to his boxes. “I’m not hungry.”

Patrick frowns and considers how else to get Pete back in the house. He decides on, “Oh, we got an email.”

“Yeah?” Pete is distracted, his head disappearing into a box.

“Some kind of couch concert benefit thing.”

“Couch concert?” Pete’s voice is muffled.

“Yeah, you know, like, we’d sing from our couch. Well, I’d sing. We could maybe sync up with Joe and Andy in their houses. I don’t know. I didn’t catch the details. Come and read the email with me.”

“In a bit,” Pete promises, emerging from the box.

“No, it was kind of time-sensitive,” insists Patrick.

Pete sighs heavily but steps away from the box, walks over to Patrick. He moves like he’s dragging through quicksand. “Did you figure out Tennyson’s science homework?” he asks when he reaches him.

“No, actually. It’s about fucking electricity. I didn’t want to tell Tennyson that once you blew a fuse in our apartment and it took us so long to figure out how to fix it that we just lived for days with no electricity in the kitchen and everything in the fridge went rotten.” Patrick tugs Pete into the house, steers him carefully.

“I mean,” says Pete indignantly, “are people just supposed to _know_ what to _do_ when the electricity stops working?”

“Apparently if you pay attention to fourth-grade science, I don’t know.” Patrick shrugs and steps aside and now they’ve reached the family room and Pete can see, in all its glory, their surprise.

“Ta-da!” exclaims Tennyson, leaping in front of them.

Pete blinks, astonished. “What’s this?”

“It’s a blanket fort!” enthuses Tennyson. “Like, _the coolest_ blanket fort. Patrick and I spent all this time making it.”

Pete looks at him. “I thought you were learning about electricity.”

“No, I don’t understand electricity, we did this instead. Go on, explore it.” Patrick nods toward the tented blankets and stacked pillows and twinkling Christmas lights.

Pete grins at him. He looks much better already, honestly. Patrick’s so glad he had this idea. Pete drops to his knees and crawls into the cozy space and Tennyson follows him in, explaining the physics of the entire design, and they’re a little pile of Wentzian joy and Patrick stands and looks at them and thinks, _Good job, Stump_.

“Patrick, come play Uno,” Tennyson commands, so Patrick snags the bowl of popcorn and joins them in the crawlspace.

They play Uno and then they watch _The Goonies_ , and Tennyson falls asleep between them, his head lolling toward Pete, who brushes his hair back and kisses the top of his head.

“Poor kiddo,” he sighs. “Am I freaking him out?”

“He’s a lot like you, you know,” says Patrick. “He manages to freak himself out all on his own. But it’s okay. I know how to trick Wentzes into thinking I’ve got things under control.”

Pete smiles. He looks from Tennyson to Patrick, the smile growing. “Thank you for this.”

Patrick shrugs, embarrassed as he always is after a gift is given, when he never knows how to say, _I’d give you so much more_.

“We’re so lucky you’re here,” Pete says hoarsely.

“I mean,” says Patrick. “Same.”

“No.” Pete shakes his head. “I was thinking today, out in the garage, if I’d gotten the Schrodinger question wrong, you wouldn’t _be_ here. You’d be quarantined in your house and we’d be here _alone_ and I don’t know _what_ we would have done without you, we’d’ve missed you _so much_.”

Patrick doesn’t know what to say so he says, “You know I never understand what you mean when you bring up that Schrodinger thing.”

Pete clambers over Tennyson to get to Patrick, to burrow close into him and chant, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” into his skin.

Patrick holds him and kisses him and says, “You don’t have to miss me. I’m right here.”

“Yeah,” Pete breathes. “You are. Sorry you’re stuck with me for your quarantine.”

“Pete, this is no big thing. I mean, it’s basically like being out on tour with you. Only with more space to ourselves, to be honest. What I’m saying is, since I was seventeen years old, the answer to the question ‘Who does Patrick Stump want to be confined in a limited space with for weeks on end?’ has always been you. Until you had Tennyson, and then I modified the answer to include him.”

Pete lifts his head to look at him for a long moment. “I don’t deserve you,” he says finally.

“Well, I spent a lot of years thinking I didn’t deserve _you_. Constantly catching stars for me and still insisting on trying again to get me the moon next time.”

“But you deserved all the stars and the moon.”

“Yeah, see, we’re both wrong about who deserves who.”

Pete, after a moment, smiles and settles back against him. “Okay, fine, I’ll let you win for now, Lunchbox.”

“I’ve got a blast from the past for you,” says Patrick, twisting up to snag the book he’d tucked under the couch cushion. “I was thinking, if I read to you, it might help you sleep better.” He flourishes the book at Pete. _The Sun Also Rises_.

Pete smiles. “Aww, look at that. You’re such a sentimental romantic. How’d I get so lucky?”

“Joe Trohman,” Patrick says, and Pete laughs. 

Then he snuggles down next to Tennyson, and Patrick reads. Patrick reads until Pete falls asleep, and then he reads more. He reads until his voice is so raw that he’ll never be able to do any sort of couch concert. He reads until he puts the book aside and looks at his two soundly sleeping Wentzes.

Then Patrick settles next to them. The Christmas lights twinkle around them and the house is silent, but for the deep, even breaths of his Wentzes. The world outside is raging, but right here, right now…things are okay.

Patrick falls asleep. Gradually, and then suddenly.


End file.
